Justice is the interest of the stronger. Hegel

The purpose of the courts is not justice or truth, but a verdict

"Now, if some advantage came from the laws for those who submitted to these conditions and some disadvantage to those who do not submit but resist, obedience to the laws would not be unhelpful. But as things are, it is obvious that the justice that stems from law is not sufficient to rescue those who submit. In the first place, it permits the one who suffers to suffer and the wrongdoer to do wrong, and justice was not at the time of the wrongdoing able to prevent either the sufferer from suffering or the wrongdoer from doing wrong. And when the case is brought to trial, there is no special advantage for the one who has suffered over the wrongdoer. For he must persuade the jury that he suffered and that he is able to exact the penalty. And it is open to the wrongdoer to deny it...."

The great American Henry David Thoreau in his great essay Civil Disobience went further and stated that one should break laws even if there are witnesses. He argued that you have a moral obligation to break laws even if you suffer the consquences. Out founding fathers took a much more radical view that one should violently overthrow the government if one disagrees with its laws. Thomas Jefferson proposed recurring revolutions as the only mechanism of liberty. The greatest enemy of the rule of law are governments that make a multiplicity of laws.

CONTENTS

JUDICIAL REFORM

1.TERM LIMITS

PROTECTING AGAINST AN ENTRENCHED, DYNASTIC BUREAUCRACY

WITHOUT QUALIFIED AND CAPABLE JUDGES (which means removal of bad judges), PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN THE COURTS IS ERODED AND THE RULE OF LAW CANNOT EXIST

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington

"Woe to those who decree unjust statutes and to those who continually record unjust decisions, to deprive the needy of justice, and to rob the poor of My people of their rights..."
Isaiah 10 vs 1-2

2. ELECTION OF JUDGES

3. END JUDICIAL DICTATORSHIP OR IMPERIAL JUDICIARY

4. DISQUALIFY LAWYERS FROM JUDGESHIP

This is a built-in conflict of interest: 60 o/o of Americans are denied equal justice under law

If lawyers are the worst pond scum, even lower than used car salesmen and ex-husbands, how is it that when these lawyers become judges that they are deified? Does a miraculous transformation occur? When you go to court you will only find lawyers - one of them wearing a black robe. Justice is a sham, it is not even what they are about - lawyers as judges are only interested in furthering the cartel. Law is a money-making machine. Lawyer/judges have a built-in conflict of interest - they are never going to let a pro se person win no matter how right he is, because to allow justice in such a case would be the end of the cartel - it would demonstrate that lawyers are superfluous. The emperor would be shown without clothes and their whole profession - everything the judges invested their lives in - would be diminished. Clearly legal incomes would be at risk. Lawyer/judges favor high status law firms and lawyers because those are their reference group - the people whose good opinion they seek; it advances the profession. So cases get decided on how expensive your lawyer is, never on the merits of your case. The social pressure on them is overwhelming. You can imagine the abuse they would get from the fraternity, if they ruled against a lawyer in favor of a non-lawyer (because in the end, economic interests are involved). Hypocrisy is confused with ideals like "fairness", "equality before the law" and "justice". Don't believe the hype. If you don't understand that the system is not about 'justice', try it. Try one lawsuit and you will learn a lot. We have a diseased system, which is rotten at the core and the core is lawyers. We are ruled by a tyranny of brazenly self-serving lawyers who have not only written the rules, but enforce them and then rule on their own ethics in enforcing them. Bringing balance by restraining lawyers is important.

"The abilities required in a good interpreter of the law, that is to say, in a good judge, are not the same with those of an advocate; namely the study of laws...The things that make a good judge, or a good interpreter of the laws, are, first, a right understanding of that principal law of nature called equity; which depending not on the reading of other men's writings, but on the goodness of a man's natural reason, and meditation, is presumed to be in those most, that have the most leisure, and had the most inclination to meditate thereon. Secondly, contempt of unnecessary riches and preferments. Thirdly, to be able in judgment to divest himself of all fear, anger, hatred, love, and compassion. Fourthly, and lastly, patience to hear; diligent attention in hearing; and a memory to retain, digest, and apply what he hath heard." Thomas Hobbes, 1651

WHY LAWYER/JUDGES ARE INCOMPETENT. It is not just that mediocre people go into law; good lawyers make too much money to accept the lower pay of judgeships. Therefore, only mediocre lawyers are in the pool to select from. By broadening the pool of candidates, we can have better judges.

IMPROVING ACCESS TO JUSTICE

DEALING WITH LAWYERS IS LIKE DEALING WITH SATAN

Access to justice is the paramount goal to be served and when in doubt or conflict this goal has priority over possible harm from unskilled or unethical providers (keep in mind how unethical and unskilled most lawyers are). Lawyers use regulation as a cartel mechanism to restrict trade. Lawyers are not affordable and may not be available. In 1989 the Consortium and Tulane Law School sponsored the Conference on Access to Justice in the 1990's, issuing its report titled Civil Justice: An Agenda for the 1990s. The Conference found that access to legal services by low- and moderate-income persons had not been significantly enhanced despite recent technological advances and the previous decade's experimentation with legal advertising, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, national and local legal clinics, lawyer referral and information services, and a variety of prepaid legal plans. The Conference "strongly supported the relaxation of current barriers to the involvement of non-attorneys in the provision of legal assistance and called for careful experimentation with lay advocacy programs to determine whether and how much such representation will increase access to the legal system."

1. SELF LAW

2. MORE ARBITRATION AND SMALL CLAIMS - ELIMINATE LAWYERS FROM THE PROCESS

[Lawyers] have an economic interest in cultivating and prolonging conflict. This means they are fundamentally at odds with the purposes of the legal system. Courts and lawyers exist only to explain and enforce the rules society sets for itself--and settle disputes arising from these rules. . . . The trouble is that lawyers' well-being runs in the opposite direction. The more conflict, the better. The more cumbersome and ambiguous society's rules, the better.

The limits in small claims courts should be raised to allow more cases to be heard there. Arbitration should be more encouraged and routes to it more formalized.

PRIVATE LAW - POLYCENTRIC LAW. The most exciting idea is to get rid of the state monopoly on the law altogether.
Leon Fuller explains: If the law is considered as "the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules," [Fuller's definition] then this enterprise is being conducted, not on two or three fronts, but on thousands. Engaged in this enterprise are those who draft and administer rules governing the internal affairs of clubs, churches, schools, labor unions, trade associations, agricultural fairs, and a hundred and one other forms of human association ... there are in this country alone "systems of law" numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Gustave de Molinari was probably the first legal theorist who dared to argue that under the state's monopoly of law: Justice becomes slow and costly, the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longer respected, [and] the price of security is abusively inflated and inequitably apportioned ...

The concept is to have all contracts include the name of an arbiter and eliminate criminal law. Back in old Anglo-Saxon England there was no crime against the state but all crimes were settled by the victims and the perpetrators before private courts.

For a detailed study of this great idea see: Private Law, Polycentric Law

3. ELIMINATE CONTINGENCY LITIGATION

4. DEREGULATION - ANY PARTY REPRESENTED BY ANYONE

TECHNOLOGY VOIDS UNAUTHORIZED PRACTICE LAWS

5. COMPLAIN ABOUT LAWYER PROTECTION RACKETS

THE BAR ASSOCIATION AND HYPOCRISY

Here are some legal profession ethical canons:

• CANON 1. A lawyer should assist in maintaining the integrity and competence of the legal profession. As if it had any.
• CANON 2. A lawyer should assist the legal profession in fulfilling its duty to make legal counsel available. The ABA in a 1995 report states that they are failing miserably with poor people practically unrepresented and moderate income people unrepresented more than 60 precent of the time.
• CANON 3. A lawyer should assist in preventing the unauthorized practice of law. This is the only canon that lawyers zealously adhere to. As noted above, it is obsolete.
• CANON 7. A lawyer should represent a client zealously within the bounds of the law. Lawyers tend to either ignore this in favor of a quick buck, I mean settlement, or carry it to extremes of lying and illegal coaching of witnesses and parties.
• CANON 9. A lawyer should avoid even the appearance of professional impropriety. Right.

JURY REFORM

JURY RIGHTS

"The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts."
Samuel Chase, U.S. supreme Court Justice,
1796, Signer of the unanimous Declaration

"the jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both law and fact."
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1902

"The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided."
Harlan F. Stone, 12th Chief Justice
U.S. Supreme Court, 1941

"The pages of history shine on instance of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge..."
U.S.vs Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 113, 1139, (1972)

VICTIMS' RIGHTS

CONCLUSION: IN FEAR OF AMERICAN JUSTICE - THE SYSTEM HAS NO LEGITIMACY

ACTION

• Write/call the House Judiciary Committee
• write letters to the editor
• call talk radio
• carry placards
• put ads in the papers
• hand out flyers
• send faxes
• shame bad judges
• expose bad lawyers, write about them to the governor
• rate lawyers in your community and publish the list (list their specialities too) There is a national rating service, Martingdale and Hubbel, that has lawyers rate other lawyers in their communities on a scale of A to C and publishes it in books. Add D and F.
• get involved at the state level, write, call, organize, talk to candidates about your concerns. The state level is where lawyers are certified.
• file ethics complaints against lawyers and judges and get publicity for them, put them online.
• join groups like some of those below
• publish your horror stories
• We need judicial watchdog groups to rate judges and lawyers.
• talk to your friends and relatives.

JUSTICE

Laws are like spider webs: they hold the weak and vulnerable in their meshes and are torn to pieces and asunder by the rich and powerful. Anacharsis, 5th century B.C.

A law which is unjust is a law in name only. St. Augustine

There is nothing more subject to perpetual agitation than the laws. Montaigne

There is no justice, either in or out of court. Clarence Darrow, world's most famous lawyer

"Every law or rule of conduct must lay down or rest upon some general principle, and must therefore, if it succeeds in attaining its end, commend this principle to public attention or imitation, and thus affect legislative opinion... The true importance, indeed, of laws lies far less in their direct result than in the effect upon the sentiments or convictions of the public." - A.V. Dicey

Courts are constantly making ex post facto Law and thus are excercising a highly unpopular power. John Chipman Grey in his The Nature and Sources of the Law (1909) states "the Law, except for a few crude notions of equity involved in some of its general principles, is all ex post facto. (p 97)" People don't have the vaguest notion of what the law is and "the Law of which man has no knowledge is the same to him as if it did not exist." And if a case comes up in which there seems to be no law or precedent, the judge makes a rule of law for the occasion. "That rule is the Law, yet the duties and rights of the parties were not known and not knowable by them." That is how the courts treat their victims. Thus the true lawgiver is not one who utters the words of the law but "whoever hath an absolute authority to interpret any written or spoken laws..."

For all words are subject to ambiguity; and therefore multiplication of words in the body of law is multiplication of ambiguity. (which leads to injustice and many unnecessary processes) -Thomas Hobbes. Unnecessary laws are not good laws.

And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning,
wound for wound, stripe for stripe. God, Exodus 21:23-25
This may be called the law of nature or equity.

JUSTICE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN LAW OR JUDICIARY

To give false judgment is a greater crime: because not only he has wrong, that falls by such judgments, but all judgments are rendered useless, and occasion ministered to force and private revenges. -Thomas Hobbes

Our country was founded on the right to revolution - with very little tolerance for injustice. The law books say that as important as justice is the appearance of justice. I say that if the courts were just, they wouldn't need to think about appearances. A large part of the reason there are appeal courts is to sucker the victims of the first round into thinking they have recourse. They don't, since the appeal is a greater farce than the trial - the courts have a stated bias to uphold the lower court and a real bias to scratch their friends and colleagues' backs. Most appeals court rulings are written by law clerks who are 2nd year law students. Oral arguments are almost never heard, because the appeals court does not want to even know what the case is about - they make form letter rulings without even reading the case. Not hearing the case also saves time. Vigilantes are often condemned apparently only because they sometimes make fact-finding errors. They are vigorously attacked because law-enforcement officials resent the implication that they can't do their jobs. But often the police don't do their job and often courts make errors. Where then is justice? And if injustice is rampant - doesn't that loose the bonds of society? Any criticism of vigilantes must be doubled back when the system errs - with greater force since judges and police are on the public payroll and have sworn a duty to perform. Isn't vigilantism the moral equivalent of citizen's arrest, ie.. a citizen being a police officer, a citizen executing the law? Isn't it a duty? If facts are clear (O.J. for example) and justice isn't served, what are the objections to vigilantism? If someone executed OJ, is anyone going to argue that they made a fact-finding error, that they didn't find the real killer? That justice in the sense of equity was not served? Should we have an ombudsman, to cleanup after our shoddy judiciary?

WE NEED MORE JUSTICE. When it fails, it should be fixed and ignored until it is fixed. For more harm can come from a bad system that fails everyone again and again than from random individual acts outside a system. Criminal law was set up to institutionalize revenge. The idea is to replace the revenge of the victim and his family with the revenge of the state. There are several good reasons for doing that: to make proper factual determinations of who is responsible and the appropriate penalty, to end the cylce of revenge which could otherwise extend through time, and to protect the weak who may not have the means of revenge. However, the American justice system fails on all counts and seems not to even understand its purpose. It has been subverted by lawyers who care only about themselves and their profession.

What is a judiciary without justice? What is a legal system without truth? If you are wronged in court, you must become an angel of justice...

SOME LINKS

• To see an example of blatant injustice as well as the destruction of the US Constitution see: The End of Free Speech
• America's Worst Judges We need to have a national database of judges' home addresses and phone numbers.
• UCLR - United Citizens for Legal Reform has a database of unethical lawyers and judges
• HALT - the oldest and biggest legal reform organization with 70,000 members
• FLAC - For Legally Abused Citizens
• RAND Center for Civl Justice keeps stats that can be used in legal reform arguments.
• People Before Lawyers
• Lawyers as Judges - Why Lawyers make bad Judges
• Bad Judges - and what to do about them.
• Reform - Legal and Ethics Reform Page
• American Family Law Association - More Legal Reform
• ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union - don't expect them to help you
• Anti Shyster - Critical Examination of the Legal System
• Prison Reform - A radical analysis: drug policy, death penalty, deportation, corporal punishment
• Justice for All

  This organization has dedicated itself to reforming the criminal justice system through community sponsorship, education,legislation, and support organizations who share the same goal.

• Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA):

  Excellent information on serving on juries, how to act as an informed jury member, jury reform, book reviews, and more. Find out what you can do to join FIJA's national association.

• American In Justice Magazine:

  Addresses the issues of legal abuse, and actions that may help activate the reformation of certain aspects of our legal process. This site gives readers a chance to submit their own articles and sound off about judicial and legal abuse.

• Cyber Legal

  Offers a variety of legal information including self help law. An interesting site for pro se litigants, gives an alternative to those high cost, commercial attorney fees.